


always with me

by dadlands



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, gratuitous references to ghibli movies, references to bb and hals family, spoilers for the whole series but very subtle ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 01:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14863811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadlands/pseuds/dadlands
Summary: Set in between MGS2 and MGS4. From within their cabin off the grid, Solid Snake and Otacon juggle running a NGO, raising a daughter, hiding from the government, and figuring out what it means to "let the world be."





	always with me

Hal steps over the sleeping dogs and carefully sits down on the couch next to Dave and passes him Sunny, who stirs briefly in her sleep but snuggles into Dave’s arms. Dave looks down at the peaceful three-year-old, and though he’s not smiling, Hal can see the love and protectiveness in his eyes. Their familiarity comes from years of working together, half a decade at this point, and more than a few near-death experiences. Hal’s feels a need to kiss Dave, to just make sure that they’re both real and have lived this long and have  _ a child _ together. It wouldn’t be out of place. They’ve been dating for a while now, to the surprise of nobody expect maybe Raiden. Touch between them is grounding, helps them both snap out of nightmares and hellish dayscapes.

Instead of proclaiming his undying love, Hal instead places his head on Dave’s shoulder and whispers, as to not wake Sunny up, “She should be using whole sentences by now.”

“Under normal circumstances for linguistic growth,” Dave replies with ease, low voice vibrating throughout his body and, by extension, Hal’s. “I doubt the Patriots were giving her a great environment to learn in.” He brushes Sunny’s hair away from her eyes, calloused hands gentle. He’s propped up his feet on the coffee table, and nudges a book laying on it towards Hal with one of them.

“Gross,” Hal mutters. “Use your hands.”

“They’re kind of full,” Dave says. “And I’m wearing socks.”

Hal takes his head off of Dave’s shoulder, and picks up the book. It’s a well-worn copy of  _ What to Expect When You’re Expecting: The Toddler Years _ , and Hal knows it’s been read cover to cover by both of them. Dave might have not left notes in the margins, but he quotes it enough for Hal to be confident in his familiarity with it. He flips to the section on developmental milestones, which has been marked up more thoroughly with dates and recordings of firsts. What’s new is the photograph that’s been wedged in there, and Hal takes it out gently. It’s a photo of Sunny standing next to the larger of their two huskies, neither of which have names, and grinning as it licks her face. Hal gives a small smile and leans against Dave again. There’s some glare, and Sunny has red eye, but Dave was never great with technology unless it was implanted in his bloodstream. It’s a great photo. Hal makes a mental reminder to put it in the photo album he keeps.

Dave looks briefly at the clock on the wall, and intones something about putting Sunny in her bed. The cabin they have isn’t large, with their bedroom doubling as Hal’s workspace and Sunny’s room as temporary storage, but it’s enough. He follows Dave down the hall and watches from the doorway as he places her in bed. “Bed” is generous, Hal corrects himself, seeing as it’s a twin-sized mattress on the ground, but it’s also covered with blankets, and stuffed animals, and is accompanied by a night-light. His and Dave’s bed is no better, with less blankets and a pillow for Hal, with Dave insisting that pillows gave him neck aches anyways. Dave’s pillow mysteriously appeared on Sunny’s bed the next night.

Sunny’s in bed later than usual. Hal tries to get her to go to bed on a consistent basis, which sometimes includes Dave telling her a story or Hal attempting to sing a song. This morning, however, Hal was nowhere to be found and Otacon took his place, leaving Sunny locked out of the workroom where he was. Dave took all the parenting duties for the day, making breakfast and lunch, putting on various VHS tapes of Ghibli movies and Pokemon reruns, and keeping Sunny from crying at the door.

“Uncle Hal’s working,” Hal heard Dave say through the door, earlier that day. “It’s our job to make sure he can do his.” 

In the present, Sunny stirs as Dave stands, and opens an eye to look at the door. “Song,” she says quietly. “Please.”

Hal resists the urge to groan, Philanthropy business having soaked up all his energy and leaving him eager for bed. He begins to make excuses and promises for another time, when Dave offers, “How about I tell you a story, instead.”

Sunny’s disappointment is visible, but she dozes off as Dave tells an incredibly exciting story about a fox and a snake. Hal listens in as he brushes his teeth, and he’s almost positive that Dave is retelling a raunchy Foxhound story minus the copious drinking and smoking until he hears about a one-eyed monster. Sunny gasps in delight as Dave talks about the fall of the beast, sighs sadly when he mentions the brave fox’s sacrifice, and yawns when he finishes with the snake slithering home to be with his master. She’s fast asleep by the time Dave joins him in the bathroom. He’s sitting on the edge of the tub as he scratches at the scruff on his chin while swishing mouthwash, and Hal waits for him to finish before they stumble into bed, holding onto each other, feeling each other’s breath on their skin. 

“Does the snake get a happy ending?” Hal asks quietly. Dave hums thoughtfully. He’s barely spoken about his past, tenses up when Big Boss is mentioned, won’t disclose details about the years of drinking and depression before Shadow Moses. Campbell barely knows anything, so Hal is left to piece together what sort of life his partner has lived from vague analogies and tangential information.

Not that Hal’s background is much happier.

“Snakes don’t deserve happy endings,” Dave says darkly, his voice muffled by Hal’s pajama shirt. Hal runs his hand through Dave’s hair, and sighs.

“Neither of us do, Dave,” Hal whispers. “But we’re going to write our own anyways.”

 

* * *

 

The Philanthropy business comes back to haunt them within the next month, and Hal spends more hours in the bedroom, redirecting funds, seeding blueprints, and tracking IP addresses to thirty thousand different places across the globe. It’s a warm day outside, and Hal can hear the laughter of Sunny and occasionally Dave as they play with the dogs. Around noon, Sunny carefully brings in a plate with a sandwich on it, and Dave follows with a glass of milk. Hal ruffles Sunny’s hair and thanks her, then kisses Dave while Sunny sticks her tongue out in childish disgust. Sunny won’t leave until Hal takes a bite, and once he does she runs out of the room to go back downstairs. Dave gives him another kiss and follows Sunny. The day progresses normally until that evening, just after dinner time, when Sunny’s crying fills the house and the howling of the dogs follows afterwards.

Hal pauses his work and rushes downstairs, where  _ Spirited Away _ is paused on the TV and Sunny is weeping in Dave’s arms. The dogs are hushed now, their heads resting near Sunny, protectively watching her.

“What happened?” Hal asks.

“The parents, uh, got turned into pigs,” Dave answers, confused. Hal remembers the scene vividly, but he never thought it would be seen as frightening. “She didn’t like that. But it’s okay, Otacon. We’ve got this.” After reassuring him, Dave’s attention immediately turns back to Sunny. He doesn’t sing to her, or try and tell jokes like Hal desperately does to cheer Sunny up, but instead quietly reassures her that he’s here, Uncle Hal’s here too, neither of them are eating weird food and turning into pigs.

Reassured, Hal heads back upstairs. He hears Sunny’s crying stop, and the movie beginning again. They’re just on the credits when Hal is finished with his business for the day. He creeps downstairs to find Sunny dozing off in Snake’s arms. Snake is awake and turns around when Hal approaches. He gives him a small smile.

“The dogs have names now,” Dave says.

“Sen and Haku?” Hal guesses, and Dave nods. The dogs are well-trained, and Dave merely has to grunt for them to leap, but Hal has no doubt that Dave will have them responding to Sunny’s chosen names for them within the next few days. Hal sits down next to him, careful not to step on Sen and Haku, and leans his head on Dave’s shoulder. He looks around the living room they have together, noting the discarded empty bowls, the fireplace gone cold, the beat-up couches they got secondhand at a thrift store. The song for the credits fades out, and the VHS player clicks off.

“Interesting song,” Dave comments, and Hal looks curiously at him before remembering that the man is fluent in six different languages, Japanese included.

“I’ve always liked it,” Hal says.  _ Spirited Away _ was a fairly recent film, but Ghibli had been present in his youth. He was fourteen when he and Emma and first watched  _ My Neighbor Totoro _ , just the two of them, her mother and his father out for the evening. She had been delighted by it, and it left Hal longing for a childhood he felt was missing. The sick mother present in the film hit too hard. It had made Hal wish that he had more concrete memories of his own mother.

He looks down at Sunny’s hair and feels some tug, some vague concept from when he was her age, but it vanishes as soon as it arrives and he’s left feeling empty once more.

“You’re thinking too hard, Otacon,” Dave says, breaking Hal’s concentration. The latter laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. Sunny stirs, and he quiets down.

“The song - it just reminds me of my childhood,” Hal admits. “I mean, I guess the whole movie does.”

Dave hums, his wordless way of asking someone to go on, so Hal allows himself to ramble. “Emma and I, we used to watch these kind of movies together. I tried to make sure she was happy as a kid, but to be honest, I didn’t know anything about that. All of my memories from when I was younger - do you remember anything from when you were young? Sunny’s age?”

Dave nods. “A little. I had a birthday party when I was four. Only government agents showed up. I got a picture book on dogs.”

Hal groans. “See? That - that makes sense for your childhood. But me? Nothing but laboratories. Snake, I have memories of being in a giant robot. In something like Metal Gear. I know it sounds ridiculous. It’s probably just my psyche and guilty conscious haunting me, but it feels so real. But it can’t be. I have nothing until first grade. It’s like nothing was real until then.” His voice cracks. “Dave, I don’t even know who my mother is. I’m just here, making mistake after mistake after mistake-”

“Stop it, Hal,” Dave interrupts. “Just, stop. Breathe.”

They breathe together. In and out. After the silence, Dave speaks.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know who my mother is. But it doesn’t matter.” Dave takes a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter that Big Boss is my father, or that I’m a clone of him. It doesn’t matter that half my life is classified under a government that wants me dead. We have a job here, as Philanthropy.”

“Let the world be,” Hal adds, and Dave nods.

“We can let people live. We’re not making our parents mistakes. I’m not Big Boss, and you’re not your parents. We’re separate from them,” Dave says. “We can write our own ending.”

Hal thinks back to the story Dave told Sunny almost a month ago, to his declaration to go without a happy ending. He sighs and leans deeply against Dave, who rests his head on Hal’s in return.

“Hopefully happy,” Hal says, and Dave’s small laugh is enough to wake Sunny up. She stretches her arms and looks up at the two of them, tears drying on Hal’s cheeks and the side of Dave’s face buried in Hal’s hair, and yawns.

“Let’s go to bed, Sunny,” Hal says, and Dave picks her up and carries her up the stairs. At one point, he adjusts her so that one hand is free, and he reaches for Hal’s arm with it. The three of them walk up the too-narrow stairs together, and place Sunny on the mattress on the ground with the mounds of stuffed animals and Snake’s sacrificed pillow.

“Song, please,” she whispers before Hal and Dave reach the door. Hal smiles and sits on the foot of the bed, and clears his throat. Before he can begin, Sunny interrupts him. “Spirited song,” she requests. Hal shifts uncomfortably.

“It won’t be good,” he says, unsure. Dave makes a noise of disbelief, and Sunny cheers him on. Eventually, he relents, and his tenor fills the room. His pronunciation is terrible, but if he hears an infinitely quieter bass voice joining him to smooth over the choppy parts, he doesn’t mention it.

At least not in front of Sunny. Later, when they’re in bed in each other’s arms, Hal teases Dave.

“I didn’t know you sang,” he says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dave replies, voice betraying him completely.

“Maybe you can start singing for her sometimes. I’m sure she’d love it.”

A quiet ‘hmph’ is his only response. They don’t exchange any “I love you”s before they fall asleep. It’s not their way. Tonight, if Hal hears one quietly whispered, in a deep voice, hesitant and afraid of loss, he chalks it up to sleep talk. If Dave hears one quietly returned, in the same voice that sang their daughter to sleep, he’ll assume sleep talk as well.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from always with me, the song that plays during the credits of spirited away! [here's the link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr8GurL8W_4) if you're interested.  
> snake canonically can speak 6 languages and im guessing that japanese is one of them. otacon can't speak japanese for shit but he has a passing understanding of it.  
> ghibli was a big part of my childhood - i loved totoro as a child and would watch it near daily. sunny's reaction to spirited away is based on my own when i was 4: i cried so hard when her parents were turned into pigs and didn't try to watch it again for 14 years (i actually sat down and finished it only last year)  
> thanks for reading!


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